Tag: Early childhood education and care

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Activities to Boost Fine Motor Development: Birth to Five

Fine motor skills are described as small movements attributed to use of the hands. Children under five are especially in need of exercises in building fine motor skills as it prepares them for writing and the everyday actions we partake in as adults. So what activities can you do with your young child to help them develop their fine motor skills? I am glad you asked. In this article, I will list the many ways that you can use play to help your child develop fine motor skills.

Newborns

With newborns their bodies are not ready to develop fine motor skills, but there is one thing that you do to prepare them for future development.

  • Massaging hands with newborns can help prepare them for later use in engaging the muscles

Infants

Infants are becoming accustomed to the world around them and experience their world through the senses, especially with hands on exploration. Support your little one with as many safe toys and objects to practice grabbing, tapping and squeezing.

  • Textured blankets or rugs generally entice infants in that they begin to scratch at them. This “scratching” gives a larger range in hand motion that will help build their fine motor skills.
  • Toy shakers and rattles invite infants to use their hands to grasp hold of the object.
  • Give your infant an extra spoon to hold when they are introduced to solid foods.
  • Use a drum or hardcover book for patting.
  • Roll a ball across the floor.

Toddlers

Toddlers have a bit more experience with the use of their hands than infants, but there is still a lot more to do. Overall balance and coordination are subject to growth, and fine motor skills are no exception. Use this time to refine their current ability with their hands.

  • Use crayons to color a picture.
  • Encourage them to put on their shoes by themselves.
  • Tear up recycled newspaper.
  • Introduce safety scissors for practice.
  • Practice zipping up coats and pants.
  • Mold some play dough.
  • Roll a tennis ball across the floor and cover it with a funnel.
  • Play with puppets.
  • Put away toys into a container.
  • Paint with sponges.
  • Paint with paint brushes.
  • Toss bean bags in the air and catch them or pick them back up.
  • Read a story together and have your toddler turn the pages.
  • Water play in the sand and water table.
  • Cook a meal together and encourage toddler to help stir, mix and/or pour the ingredients.

Preschoolers

Preschoolers have much better control over their hands than in earlier years. With more practice, they can begin to hold their hands and fingers in a position for longer periods of time. This skill level will lay the foundation for tracing and writing.

  • Use cotton balls to paint a picture.
  • Hang up art to dry with clothespins.
  • Draw lines on paper for children to cut along with scissors.
  • Practice tying shoelaces.
  • Bead some necklaces.
  • Cook a meal together where they can crack eggs, or practice cutting with a butter knife with supervision.
  • Tracing letters on paper.
  • Scooping and measuring rice in the sensory sand and water table.
  • Use thinner paint brushes to paint a picture.
  • Measure water using tablespoons and teaspoons.
  • Draw shapes with chalk.

These are all just some of the many ways you can implement fine motor skill building into your daily learning through play! There are plenty more that haven’t been listed; what are some things you’ve done with your child to perfect fine motor skills?

 

 

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Early childhood educators rely on families to prop up low income, research finds

This article was written by Paula McDonald, Karen Thorpe, and Susan Irvine

Early childhood educators struggling in low-paid jobs often have to prop up their income through family members and/or partners, new research shows.

Wages for qualified early childhood teachers have improved over time. However, incomes of those with vocational qualifications, including diplomas and certificates, remain low and do not reflect the responsibilities that characterise the role.

Certificate III-qualified educators, who assist in the design and delivery of educational programs, are paid A$753 per week before tax. This is considerably below the average weekly earnings of $1,137 across all occupations.

The difference between the pay rates of certificate-qualified early childhood educators and the Australian national minimum wage of $17.29 per hour before tax is minimal.

Dissatisfied with pay and conditions

Many early years educators believe their pay is too low. This is a view shared by politicians, including Tanya Plibersek and Sarah Hanson-Young, unions and an increasing number of peak bodies and employers.

The 2013 National Early Childhood Education and Care Census reported that 87% of educator respondents indicated satisfaction with their job, but half were dissatisfied with pay and conditions.

Another survey of educators who had left the sector found that low pay had influenced the decision to leave.

In any one day, early childhood educators may undertake a range of tasks requiring different skills. These include observing and interacting with children, planning and implementing the curriculum, engaging with parents, including referring them to other services, and other care activities such as preparing meals, changing nappies and cleaning.

Educators said that their daily work exposed them to health risks such as acquiring illnesses when children were unwell.

Significant physical demands were also reported. These included lifting children, as well as furniture and equipment. Receiving a decent day’s pay was considered a reasonable expectation for these physical requirements and risks.

They also compared their pay to the hours they worked. Although weekend work and work after 6.30pm should be paid at 150-200%, we found many examples of educators who worked unpaid hours.

Typically, this involved preparing learning materials at home in the evenings for the next day, attending professional development after hours, or community liaison work on the weekends. This kind of unpaid work is also common for other educators, such as schoolteachers.

Why retention is still high

Although pay is low, early years educators often rationalise their decision to stay in the sector as essentially a vocational choice.

Many argued that their desire to assist children to develop and learn trumped the pursuit of money in occupational decisions. But this happened only when educators had access to alternative sources of household incomes to cover basic necessities such as rent or mortgage payments, food and child-rearing expenses.

To cover these expenses, additional household income is often needed. For some, this is derived from partners who earn higher incomes in other occupations and hence offset their low wages. Others describe the importance of financial support from parents, ex-partners and other extended family members.

While increased demand has led to improvement in wages for early childhood teachers, this is not the case for all educators in long day care.

Shallow pay structures, the costs of study for educators earning near minimum wage, as well as inflexible training programs, constrain the process of professionalisation of this workforce.

Yet this remains an important goal for the sector, because staff qualifications strongly impact the quality of care and education provided to young children.

Policy needs to redress low pay

Developing effective policy in the early childhood education and care sector needs to address more than just issues of access and costs to parents and the government.

A critical, but often invisible, part of delivering effective early years education and care is about ensuring fairness for the workforce itself.

The idea of fairness and equality is especially important when we consider that the sector is staffed almost exclusively by women.

The very low proportion of men working in the sector, reported at around 3%, is likely to be a consequence of low pay.

It may also be part of the cause. Highly feminised sectors of the labour market are often low-paid. Examples include librarians, community service workers and retail service assistants. This situation needs to change.

In economic terms, the broader conversation about financing early years education and care should acknowledge that the sector is financed not only by governments and parents, but also propped up financially by members of educators’ households.

Where additional household income is not available, such as when educators do not have partners or families to partially support them, the educators themselves bear the cost of early years education.

The Conversation

Paula McDonald, Professor of Work and Organisation, ARC Future Fellow, Queensland University of Technology; Karen Thorpe, Professor, Psychology, Queensland University of Technology, and Susan Irvine, Associate Professor, School of Early Childhood, QUT Caboolture, Queensland University of Technology

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.